Father Feeds Flock!!!

We knew that we were going to  watch the opening ceremonies for the olympics tonight. As we all know, 2012 was in London. Having been to London, we wanted to eat something that reminded us of our trip while we watched. Fish n Chips came to my mind and then I couldn't  think of anything else. The chips were homemade, hand cut and pre-fried until just starting to turn brown, then set aside to await the second fry to crisp them up. I found an English beer battered recipe online.  In which, I learned that if you let the fish sit in the flour for a bit, it will help keep  it from sliding off during frying. After sitting in the flour and being coated by a simple beer batter (Boddingtons Pub Ale and a dash of Malt Vinegar),  I used the Fry Daddy to create a crisp & golden brown. I plated the fish on the chips, with a side of coleslaw! Of course with a little lemon to squeeze over the fish. Two ...

I wanted to do something traditional for the 4th of July holiday, but since this is a father feeding his flock, I didn't want to just grill hot dogs and burgers. So I thought about it, and came up with some specialty pizzas. Why not make a couple of pizzas that contained and tasted like the traditional holiday fare. I've heard of, and eaten cheeseburger pizza, but never even thought about a hot dog pizza.   At the last minute, I thought about sauerkraut.  Which lead me to bratwurst.  Boom!  3 pizzas! Instead of just browning some hamburger meat, I thought about creating small patties, and pre-cooked them, as if I was making sliders. The cast iron and grill press were perfect to get the crust that I was looking for. Here is what my patties looked like. I, once again, used J-Liver's (Jamie Oliver) homemade pizza dough recipe. For the cheeseburger pizza I used pizza sauce,  mixed with ketchup.  T...

Our trip to Costco also granted us a bag of littleneck clams. I wanted to try something a bit different, so I thought it would be fun to cook up some clams. I found a clam and tomato broth recipe, but at the last minute I altered the plan.  One...it was too  similar to the recipe I used for the red snapper the other day. Two..I wanted to use butter and garlic! I looked at several recipes online, and then just used the basic components from a few of them. I used grape seed oil, garlic, white wine, thyme,  parsley and red pepper flakes. After about 7-8 minutes of steaming, almost all of the clams opened. I think we only had about 5 that didn't and therefore I discarded them. Plated simply in a bowl, to hold the broth, I added some crusty bread.  Dutchess came up with a saying... "dip it.  clam it.  stuff it!" Dip the bread into the broth, put a clam on it, then stuff it into your mouth!!!! Zachary was a troope...

I started with these ingredients... Celery, onions and green peppers sweated it out in the pan to start the culinary feat. Then I added tomatoes (from our garden, of course), tomato paste, garlic, worchester,  ketchup and shirachi sauce which I cooked until tender. I had a leftover roasted corn, so I sliced it off the cob and added it to the sauce to  inpart some sweetness and depth of flavor. We got a large container of baby bok choy from Costco so this was the vegetable de jour. I added some shallots, butter and olive oil and the wilting began. Once the celery was tender, I put the tomato sauce through the ricer.  This created a smooth and savory sauce. After scaling the snapper, I put it in a pan and added the sauce.  This baked in a 350 degree oven until done. I also had some leftover brown rice from Pei Wei, so  I fried it with broccoli and parsley. This didn't s...